More than 50 coal ash spill cleanup workers and workers' survivors are suiing Jacobs Engineering for unsafe working conditions that they allege lead to sickness and death at the cleanup site.
Angela Gosnell/News Sentinel

A former TVA spokeswoman who assured a national television audience in the wake of the nation’s largest environmental disaster that coal ash was safe – even as the EPA was warning Roane County residents it was toxic – is refusing to testify on behalf of workers who are now sick, dying or dead after cleaning it up without protection.

Anda Ray says she will not voluntarily testify on behalf of the hundreds of blue collar laborers who worked – unprotected – to clean up the massive coal ash spill at the TVA Kingston Fossil Fuel Power Plant.

The workers – more than 30 of whom are now dead and more than 200 sick or dying – are suing Jacobs Engineering, the contractor TVA put in charge of the clean up over their treatment. Phase one of that toxic tort lawsuit goes to trial Tuesday in U.S. District Court.

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Coal ash is produced primarily from the burning of coal in coal-fired power plants.
Wochit

Swimming in coal ash

The workers contend Jacobs’ supervisors told them coal ash was safe and refused them protective gear.

Ray’s testimony is crucial for the laborers because she, too, claimed coal ash was safe even as the EPA was warning against exposure to it.

Ray was the public face of TVA after a dike at the Kingston power plant in Roane County gave way in December 2008, spilling 5 million cubic yards of coal ash – full of toxins such as arsenic, lead, mercury and radium – over 300 acres of land and into the region’s waterways.

When a film crew from 60 Minutes showed up at the spill in response to what was then the nation’s worst environmental disaster, Ray gave an interview in which she said coal ash was safe and insisted she would take a swim herself in the ash-contaminated water without worry.

Signs warned the public of the danger of coal ash, but those safety precautions were not afforded workers, they say.(Photo: Submitted)

The EPA, meanwhile, was posting signs along the region’s waterways in Roane County, warning the public that exposure to coal ash was dangerous and to stay out of those waterways. The U.S. Coast Guard was busy shutting down the waterways. Ray later retracted her statement. The CBS show aired the original footage and the retraction.

Dodging the witness stand?

The workers’ attorneys can’t show jurors that video without Ray on the witness stand. Attorney Keith Stewart at a hearing Monday in U.S. District Court called her testimony “foundational” to the workers’ case.

Wearing ordinary gear, workers were covered from head to toe in wet coal ash for 14-hour days, in some cases for years.(Photo: Submitted)

Stewart has been trying to serve Ray with a subpoena for two weeks. He told U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Guyton on Monday that he’s sent it via email, traditional mail and certified mail and sent a copy to the Knoxville office of her current employer, Electric Power Research Institute.

Stewart said Ray called him after he sent one of those subpoenas.

“I spoke to her directly when she called me on my cellphone,” Stewart said.

Stewart said Ray agreed both to be served with the subpoena through electronic means and to testify.

“(Her response) was, more or less, no problem,” Stewart told Guyton. “(She said), ‘That’s been so many years ago. I don’t think this thing is ever going to go away.’ We had a fairly lengthy conversation. She called me … Ms. Ray never mentioned work (conflicts). She never mentioned travel plans. She never mentioned any obligations. She agreed to appear. There was no equivocation on her part.”

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On separate occasions, workers secretly filmed Jacobs Engineering staffers cleaning coal ash out of monitor filters before packaging them to be sent for testing.
Submitted

Judge skeptical

But attorney Ronald T. Hill insisted Ray made no such agreement.

“She did not agree to be here,” Hill said.

Hill said the workers must personally serve Ray with the subpoena to compel her testimony, and Stewart had not yet done that. He insisted Ray was not dodging the subpoena.

But Hill argued federal rules bar Guyton from commanding Ray to testify even if he determines she was properly served with the subpoena. Hill said Ray no longer has a home in Tennessee, spends little time in Tennessee and is already tied up with a European vacation and her upcoming trip to Washington, D.C., so coming to Tennessee for the trial would be “a burden.”

Stewart offered to pay her expenses. Hill declined the offer on her behalf. Guyton said he had no choice but to quash the subpoena. He acknowledged the blow to the laborers’ case as a result.

“I understand the position the (workers) are in,” he said.

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From the archives: An estimated 5.4 million cubic yards of sludge burst from a failed retention pond at a TVA Kingston fossil plant near Harriman, Tenn. in the early morning of Dec. 22, 2008.
Erin Chapin/News Sentinel

Investigation revelations

USA TODAY Network-Tennessee launched an investigation of the workers’ claims last year and has published a series of stories that showed:

The EPA bowed to demands by Jacobs to lower worker safety standards and by TVA to downplay the toxicity of coal ash and the danger of exposure to it in public signage;

Jacobs and TVA managers refused to provide workers’ protective gear even when their doctors prescribed it;

Jacobs supervisors repeatedly told workers – falsely – they could eat or drink a pound of coal ash a day safely;

TVA ratepayers foot the bill for a $1 million decontamination complex for clean-up vehicles while Jacobs provided workers – who worked 12 to 14 hours every day mired in and surrounded by coal ash – a single bucket of water and a brush to clean their bodies and boots.

Jim Sanders, lead attorney for Jacobs Engineering, argued that the workers must prove the specific coal ash at the Kingston site was dangerous and that their exposure to it is what’s killing them. This first phase of trial – to be held before Chief U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan – will focus on that issue. If the workers win that round, then they can seek damages.